Wednesday, 15 June 2016

The Politics of Insanity

As I write a flotilla of Brexit fishermen led by and MEP who failed to attend any of the EU fisheries council meetings of which he was a member is being confronted in The Thames by boats led by Sir Bob Geldof. Meanwhile, The Sun is leading with an invasion of European moths and a reading of the ongoing market slide that declares a Brexit share boost. To add to the sense of fin de siecle carnival Sir Philip Green is hectoring and bullying MPs for having the temerity to ask how he has collapsed a profitable pension scheme and left the public holding the baby.

All of these things are linked by the narcissism of all those involved delivering a hefty blow to the people of the country. The flotilla and counter flotilla do nothing to actually engage anyone with the facts and realities of the coming EU vote, The Sun's front page is a tissue of lies purpoting to be news, sold to the public via the demagoguery of its propreitor and his personal financial and political interests, Philip Green is purely interested in his personal bottom line and hang the consequences. Watching his performance I geneuinely believe that he thinks he has the absolute right to do whatever the fuck he wants.

The 70's sitcom nature of the flotilla is eerily presecient given the massive amount of support for Brexit coming from that generation of post war boomers that seemingly have the UK in their dead hand grip. Having lived through full employment in the 60s, the collapse of British industry in the 70s, given us Thatcherism in the 80s to deliver a death blow to half the country and then spent their salad days assiduously protecting their pensions and freebies in a blatant votes for favours swap that has made them an unassailable force at elections that demand special treatment, their final gift to the UK before they all succumb to dementia is to fuck it completely for those of us whose taxes pay for their priviledges.

It seems appropriate that a generation that sees no shame in selling out everyone else for themselves should be led by a gang of self interested showmen headed by Boris Johnson, a man who has reneged on every public statement he has made and yet somehow become a political force through buffoonery and obfuscation. If and when he achieves his ambition to lead what is left of the Tories I hope that, like Macbeth, he finds his vaulting ambition seriously overreaches itself. Oh for a Macduff.

There is little comfort in the knowledge that, should the country vote Leave, chickens will come home to roost. No doubt once we have excluded European migration and, in the same hand, denied outward looking younger generations the chance to exit the UK and develop an internationalist approach to life, blame group number 2 will be ready to go. That's how narcissim works, it's always the fault of the other. Could be the 'other' immigrants, many conversations over the past month with Leavers have led me to believe that its not just Poles and Romanians that stoke their ire, could even be the generations below them, that especial critique of our 'work ethic' that is rich coming from a load of people who spent half the 70s on strike and most of the 80s and 90's hoovering up council housing and spending the nation's capital whilst demanding no replacements be provided as they enriched themselves on the hard work and political capital of their own parents; the generation that fought to create a peaceful and prosperous continent.

Whatever a Leave outcome, you can be sure of one thing. The boomers won't feel a thing.